Benjamin Dupé, composer and director
Composer, guitarist, electronic musician and stage director born in 1976, Benjamin Dupé studied at the Conservatoire de Nantes and then at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris.
He devotes himself to musical creation in the broadest sense: instrumental, vocal or electroacoustic writing, improvisation and performance, music theatre, opera, installation, etc. His vision of musical creation that plays with the boundaries between disciplines, his sense of the dramaturgy of listening and his concern for the encounter with the spectator naturally lead him to stage his work as a composer.
Benjamin Dupé has received commissions from the French government, national centres for musical creation, Radio France, Ircam – Centre Pompidou, SACD (Sujets à vif), ensembles (L’Instant Donné, la Maîtrise de Caen, Musicatreize) and orchestras (Orchestre Régional de Normandie). He has also received writing grants from the Centre national de la musique and writing residencies from the Camargo Foundation.
He collaborates with artists from all disciplines: directors (Declan Donnellan, Patrice Chéreau), choreographers (Thierry Thieû Niang, Marine Colard, Balkis Moutashar), authors (Pascal Quignard, Guillaume Poix, Marie Desplechin), photographers (Pierre Morales, Agnès Mellon)… He has worked with performers such as Garth Knox, the Tana Quartet, Madeleine Mitchell, Pascal Contet, Laurent Mariusse, Caroline Cren, singers Léa Trommenschlager and Pauline Sikirdji, actor Pierre Baux and conductors Jean Deroyer and Roland Hayrabedian.
His works have been performed at contemporary music festivals (Manifeste-IRCAM, Musica Strasbourg, Donaueschingen MusikTage), opera houses (Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Théâtre de Caen, Opéra de Limoges, Opéra de Dijon), general festivals (Festival d’Avignon, Festival de Marseille), on the stages of numerous national venues, in museums, in public spaces, on the radio, and abroad (Mozarteum Salzburg).
Among them: Comme je l’entends (a piece that tackles the question of how contemporary music is perceived by the layman), Fantôme, un léger roulement, et sur la peau tendue qu’est notre tympan (an immersive concert for an ensemble of mechanical instruments), Il se trouve que les oreilles n’ont pas de paupières (musical theatre based on Pascal Quignard’s book La Haine de la musique), Du chœur à l’ouvrage (an opera for children’s voices based on an original libretto by Marie Desplechin), Vivian : clicks and pics (chamber opera inspired by the photographer Vivian Maier), Marelle / que les corps modulent! (a concert piece danced by children), (f)riou(l), un opéra maritime (a site-specific opera inspired by the small islands of Marseille)…
Since 2012, he has been artistic director of Comme je l’entends, les productions. With this company, he has been an associate composer at the Phénix scène nationale de Valenciennes, the Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil – centre dramatique national, the Théâtre Durance de Château-Arnoux / Saint-Auban and the Théâtre de Caen, scène conventionnée pour l’art lyrique. He is currently composer in residence at the Vélo Théâtre in Apt (84) as part of the “compositeur associé dans les scènes pluridisciplinaires” scheme, supported by the DGCA, Sacem and SACD.
In 2016 he was awarded the Prix nouveau talent musique by the SACD, and in 2021 he is a prizewinner in the Mondes nouveaux programme run by the French Ministry of Culture.
photo © Agnès Mellon
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